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"You don't have to win—"
"Nope. I'm going to win." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Do you think I have forgotten about you?" — about you (the 1975)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
YESEUL
What could Yeseul remember from the day she and Niki ended their pretend relationship?
Yeseul remembered being so disappointed. She remembered feeling dejected and incomplete when she received the paper bag from him as he bid his farewell to her. What bothered her even more was that he looked more nervous and excited than he was sad. It was as if the time spent together didn't matter to him the same way it mattered to her, and for a long while during that time, she had felt ashamed over herself for thinking that there was more to his actions. That maybe he also felt something as she did.
She felt so ashamed of herself then.
When Yeseul walked to her home alone, she carried the paper bag that felt heavy despite the camera being light. Upon taking multiple steps, she realized it hadn't been the paper bag that was weighing her down but rather her heavy heart that never stopped aching the moment she and Niki separated ways. She remembered not knowing why the inevitable end to their relationship had a great toll on her.
Yeseul remembered climbing up to her bed and finally mustering up the courage to open the paper bag and look at the camera, the sole remembrance that she no longer shared anything with its giver. And she supposed that will always be the case for them. Two months were merely fleeting moments.
She remembered growing annoyed when she saw the box was no longer sealed. She recalled cursing at Niki because he very obviously had used the camera before giving it to her. And when she checked the camera, she saw a video. A single video with Niki standing in front of it.
After that, history was made.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FLASHBACK
Yeseul stared confusingly at the video she found in the camera. She could clearly tell it was Niki and he was staring right at the camera, as though the film had been an apology video you would normally see in the internet. The title of the film had been the most perplexing of everything: I lied. She wondered what he could've possibly lied about that he went through all the efforts of filming just to explain his side.
Sitting upright in her bed, she selected the video and began to play it.
The first part of the video was mainly composed of Niki aligning the camera just so he'd be at the center. His background indicated that he had filmed in his bedroom and the poor lighting gave away that it was also nighttime when he took it. She had forgotten to look at the date when he filmed the video but that wasn't any of her concern, his appearance were alone enough to figure out the video had been filmed weeks ago.
"Alright, I'm ready." Niki spoke at the camera but really he was telling that to himself. "Hi Yeseul. If you're seeing this, then I'm quite sure we have broken up our pretend relationship. I'm sorry if I had seem excited when we separated ways, actually I'm not sure if I will look excited when we pretend to part ways and I give you this camera but I can imagine myself looking excited."
What? Yeseul thought, even more bewildered than she already was.
"Before I say anything about my real agenda, I also apologize for unsealing this camera and using it right now to film myself. But this was the only way I could think of to send this message to you. I know I will never be able to tell you this in real life, so I figured why not do it doing what you love? Filming." There was a smile to his face as he spoke those words, a smile that made her stomach sink. "My first memory of you was in middle school, I was at the cafeteria looking for some people to sit with and I found you sitting alone but rather than eating, you were busy watching something in your camera. That was the first time I actually noticed you, and ever since then I couldn't stop noticing you."
"Everywhere I went I kept noticing you, even when I've never seen you do the same for me. I used to talk to my older sister about you until she kicked me out of the room just to not hear about the girl who I couldn't not notice." Niki laughed as he reminisced, all while Yeseul stared at the screen, unable to look away. "It took me about a year to realize that I wasn't simply staring at you."
"I was beginning to like the girl who couldn't stop filming everything that made her smile."
Yeseul gasped. Her hand began to shake profusely as her heart attempted to break out of the cage it was entrapped in. The air around her felt as if they moved away from her, preventing her from taking a deep breath as she endeavored to calm her body from the reaction it made after the confession he dropped on her.
All this time... He liked her.
"When middle school ended, I thought I'd never see you again and my sister was so angry with me because I made her listen to me talk about you only to keep my silence when it came to confessing. I couldn't bring myself to confess to you... I was so scared and I can not believe that even when I met you again in high school, I would continue to be scared."
"That's why I lied. I lied about needing a date at my sister's party. I lied about everything that brought me to you. I lied for the sake of getting to know you and dating you, even if perhaps everything to you was fake. But knowthat everything I said to you whenever we would talk in the night and ignore our homework or run away from school to traverse the city, everything was real. During the party where I only looked at you, everything I said was true."
"I lied about needing a date, but I never lied about my feelings for you."
Yeseul stopped the video after and puts the camera down as she now stared at the wall in front of her. There was so much to process that she no longer could keep up with the turn of events. Her silence had indicated that her mind was recalibrating, trying to bypass the mess it currently was and do something as reasonable as calling the person in the video right now. But she couldn't reach for her phone, couldn't tear her eyes away from the blank wall that seemed to stare right back at her.
All it took to break her out from her trance was the sound of her phone ringing and when she realized upon glancing that it was Niki, she clicked answer and pressed the phone to her ear.
"You have some explaining to do and if you even dare to take a breather, I will put this phone down, go to your house, and kick your snooty ass. So begin speaking right now! Because I actually like you back and if this is all just a ruse of yours to get a reaction then I swear to the heavens you will not live to see the day." She had rambled for so long she hadn't even realized she confessed her feelings.
Niki laughed in the other line. "Then I have my response. I like you, let's date again and this time, we're no longer going to pretend."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ AUTHOR'S NOTE :
flashbacks are finally over!! i can finally go back to the present thank goodness. also i will not be writing about the two of them as a couple when they were in high school, nope i was not made for that kind of fluff. i will always be an angst girl at heart.
